Mike Welham Named RPG Superstar 2012!

Paizo to Publish Contest-Winning Adventure

Apr 3, 2012, 02:00 pm

After five rounds of intensive competition, amateur game designer Mike Welham has won RPG Superstar 2012, the largest annual tabletop roleplaying design contest in history. The popular vote of paizo.com's more than 200,000-strong fan community chose Mike Welham's Doom Comes to Dustpawn Pathfinder Module proposal over the final-round submissions of competitors Steve Miller, James Olchak, and Tom Phillips. Welham will receive a contract to write the full adventure, which will be released by Paizo in January, 2013.

Paizo challenged amateur game designers from around the world to show off their skills in RPG Superstar 2012, the fifth season of Paizo's search for great undiscovered game designers. Celebrity judges Sean K Reynolds from Paizo, Necromancer Games president Clark Peterson, Goblinworks CEO Ryan Dancey, and RPG Superstar 2009 winner Neil Spicer narrowed a field of hundreds of open call submissions to 32 would-be RPG Superstars, and guest judges including 2011 RPG Superstar champion Sam Zeitlin and finalists Jerral Toi and Sean McGowan, cartographer Robert Lazzaretti, Paizo developer Mark Moreland, and Paizo creative director James Jacobs provided feedback and advice throughout the contest.

In the final round, we asked this year's Top 4 to propose a 32-page Pathfinder Module for use with Paizo's Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Contestants Steve Miller (Raleigh, NC), James Olchak (Raleigh, NC), Tom Phillips (Fleming Island, FL), and Mike Welham (Kernersville, NC) responded with four compelling submissions. Welham's Doom Comes to Dustpawn won the public vote after a week of public comment and voting at paizo.com.

“With Doom Comes to Dustpawn, Mike Welham is channeling one of my favorite genres—the 'alien comes to menace the small town'” said Paizo creative director James Jacobs. “It's certainly a classic plotline, but Mike's take on the story, with a cabal of mutated wizards and what could develop into a tense race against the clock to prepare for the REAL invasion still to come has all the makings of a new classic. That it gives us a chance to look into the Dark Tapestry to see what monsters might dwell within is the eldritch icing on the cake for me!”

The 2011 RPG Superstar champion module, Sam Zeitlin’s The Midnight Mirror, releases in late April 2012.

RPG Superstar will return in 2013.

About Paizo Publishing
Paizo Publishing®, LLC is a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying games, accessories, board games, and novels. Paizo's Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game, the result of the largest open playtest in the history of tabletop gaming, is currently the best-selling tabletop roleplaying game in hobby stores. Pathfinder Adventure Path is the most popular and best-selling monthly product in the tabletop RPG industry. Paizo.com is the leading online hobby retail store, offering tens of thousands of products from a variety of publishers to customers all over the world. In the nine years since its founding, Paizo Publishing has received more than 50 major awards and has grown to become one of the most influential companies in the hobby games industry.